“De-escalation cannot occur until we truly account for what the United States has done. I wanted to model what that might look like on a personal level as an American citizen. There is an unspoken sense that the atrocities our country has committed in the Middle East are too grave to really acknowledge or account for. And yet for peace to really take hold, there is no other road forward. – ANOHNI

ANOHNI wrestles with her complicity as an American citizen and taxpayer and in relation to U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Crisis is her version of Americas un-issued Chilcot report. The lyrics of Crisis” inventory some of the ways in which the U.S. has exacerbated and helped to provoke the current global Crisis:

1. Declaring the Iraq war under the false premise that Iraq was developing weapons of mass destruction
2. Causing the deaths of more than half a million Iraqis
3. Imprisoning suspects, many of whom were innocent, indefinitely in offshore secret prisons
4. Torturing and killing suspects under the Bush administration
5. Depriving suspects of human rights and habeas corpus
6. Switching tactics under Obamas administration and using drones to execute suspects and bystanders across the Middle East and beyond
7. Imprisoning whistleblowers under Obamas administration for having the moral courage to identify US criminality
8. Filling corporate pockets with federal monies syphoned for war, weaponry and reconstruction

“We tortured people unmercifully. We probably murdered dozens of them during the course of that, both the armed forces and the CIA. — General Barry McCaffrey

There is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes the only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account. — General Antonio Taguba

We need to look forward as opposed to looking backwards. — President Barack Obama

“Because every president eventually leaves office, incoming chief executives have an incentive to quash investigations into their predecessor’s tenure. — Charlie Savage, New York Times